Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis

[FriedButter]

Exactly, building lots of silos is nice and all but the primary focus should be on advancing nuclear submarine tech as fast as possible. A large fleet of ICBM-capable subs will make China's second strike capabilities strong enough to guarantee MAD in any scenario.

I like the Russians idea of a nuclear torpedo.

 

[Overbom]

Just to help them out, PLA should just issue lubes to help them out?

Should ask the CPC why it didn't properly invest in the PLA and treated it as an abandoned child (relatively to economic). But now that a crisis is happening, the whole CPC is screaming for the military to help it out lol

They wanted economic investment? Fine.
But now that sht has hit the fan, don't complain about the PLA. Should had reached the deep pockets and properly invested in it a decade it ago. So no more whining please. China pathetically low military spending is 100% CPC's upper echelon fault. This is also Xi's fault and it shows why after his 3rd term ends, the new generation must quickly take charge of the CPC.

Finallly, the PLA can only perform its tasks with what is given by the CPC. If the CPC shts on the PLA and gives it a few shiny toys here and there, without any big numbers involved, don't expect any miracles from it

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

FT reported, that US intel was surprised by China hypersonic test last year. I don’t see any reason why we should hold the Pentagon estimates on a golden throne and the 350 estimate was from late 2020 which was 1.5 years ago.

You don’t have to believe China has 1000s of warheads but if you believe the Pentagon 2020 estimates and 2030 estimates then China certainly has more then +350 warheads available. Unless you believe China stopped producing warheads because Biden became President between 2021 and H1 2022.

You're not getting my point. It doesn't matter matter how many warheads China actually has, it matters how many its enemies think it has because the latter is what factors into their calculations and decision-making. So even if China has a lot more warheads than 350, it doesn't matter because the US doesn't think it does.

There's also the consideration that China doubling or tripling its arsenal is still far from sufficient. Instead of 1/20 of America's arsenal, China would have 1/6. Whoop-de-doo. What about the other 5/6?

 

[FriedButter]

You're not getting my point. It doesn't matter matter how many warheads China actually has, it matters how many its enemies think it has because the latter is what factors into their calculations and decision-making. So even if China has a lot more warheads than 350, it doesn't matter because the US doesn't think it does.

There's also the consideration that China doubling or tripling its arsenal is still far from sufficient. Instead of 1/20 of America's arsenal, China would have 1/6. Whoop-de-doo. What about the other 5/6?

Talking about @clockwork saying it’s pure copium to believe China has more then 350 nukes.

 

[ironborn]

Sorry, but for me, if China can suffer US warships sailing trough what China claims it's territorial waters zillion times- and do nothing- then what's one visit of a known anti-Chinese politician to Taiwan?

China never claim Taiwan strait as territorial water beyond the 12 nm. China claim it is not international water, as US claimed. Even in someone's territorial water, innocent passage is still allowed under international law, there is just pre-conditions has to been met to conduct innocent passage.
Taiwan strait is exclusive economic zone, which US probably is the only country that does not recognize such definition. You can look it up yourself to see why. Within that zone, it is still allowed to conduct passage of warships but there is still a requirement to be met to do so, not much as serious as to sail through territorial water, but almost all other countries will do the proper thing, except the exceptional people.

 

[zgx09t]

Sorry, but for me, if China can suffer US warships sailing trough what China claims it's territorial waters zillion times- and do nothing- then what's one visit of a known anti-Chinese politician to Taiwan?

Not much reasons for me to carry on here, based on the content of your post.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

Should ask the CPC why it didn't properly invest in the PLA and treated it as an abandoned child (relatively to economic). But now that a crisis is happening, the whole CPC is screaming for the military to help it out lol

The point isn't to hyperventilate about it and hurl blame, voyager. The point is to learn and do better in the future. We should hope that the upper echelons have learned the lesson being taught here.

 

[sunnymaxi]

Exactly, building lots of silos is nice and all but the primary focus should be on advancing nuclear submarine tech as fast as possible. A large fleet of ICBM-capable subs will make China's second strike capabilities strong enough to guarantee MAD in any scenario.

this is high time for Chinese government to officially announce its nuke arsenal and public the complete information of type 096 development. design to shipyard expansion have been completed. construction begun or not. nobody knows. type 094A equipped with upgraded JL-2A SLBM with enough range to strike most part of the world.

 

[Abominable]

I know you're on the Russia bandwagon, so I hope you won't take this too hard: the USSR was trash. It's impossible for China to repeat its mistakes since China is just on a different plane. It's insulting to bring up the USSR as any kind of comparison or cautionary tale to China.

The reason the USSR was trash was for the same reasons you are advocating for China. Instead of improving the lives of common people, resources were wasted on military projects trying to one up the USA.

China is not under formal restrictions but it is under practical ones. It benefits China for America to give that up since Russia would recognize that it has no chance whatsoever to keep up with America, forcing it to swallow its pride and misgivings and partner its nuclear weapons program with China's.

START has nothing to do with proliferation, it's a bilateral arms reduction treaty. Russia is under no restriction to partner with China on nuclear weapons.

While no one outside a small number of people know how many nuclear weapons China has, everyone knows exactly what both Russia and America have including ICBMs, SLBMs, and nuclear bombers. The current situation suits China fine.

The plutonium from civilian PWRs is too contaminated with Pu-240 to be useful for making thermonuclear bomb primaries. Russia has the good stuff that comes from fast reactors and decommissioned weapons.

Centrifugal isotope enrichment works on plutonium as well. While it is probably more cost effective to purchase fissile material from Russia, its better to rely on your own stockpiles.

 

[Suetham]

It is worth reminding people who are stating whether or not it is shameful to let Pelosi land in Taipei is that Pelosi's travel itinerary did not include Taiwan and neither her press release highlighted this, considering that prior to these statements the narrative increased a lot around the Pelosi traveling to Taiwan, if she lands in Taiwan it will be an unofficial visit, China has so far managed through its acts (exercises) to put pressure to exclude an official visit by Pelosi to Taiwan, even if the visit takes place, this still it's not a disgrace to China, but I'm pretty sure China will do everything possible for Pelosi not to land in Taiwan.